We believe that LGBTQ+ people deserve safe vacations that allow them to be their authentic selves. That's why our City Guides aren't locked behind a paywall. Can you contribute today?
Cancel anytime · Proudly LGBTQ+ owned and operated
Keep Calm and Stay In Astoria
I was a little skeptical of spending my New Year’s Eve at a brand new watering hole for us gay folk, Static Lounge in Astoria, Queens, New York. For one, it was the name that had me doubtful – “static.” It doesn’t really make me think of good DJ’s or delicious city men – rather, industrial-sized washing machines spinning other people’s dirty laundry, or dryer sheets, or my own sparkling belly button lint. For two, Static Lounge is a few stops out of Manhattan and away from its typical party centers. It’s in Astoria, which, if you don’t know, is one of the last remaining low-rent, albeit-charmingly eclectic neighborhoods in New York City of mostly working class families, or theater people who can’t afford to live anywhere else, or people like myself, who appreciate the writer-friendly quiet and the ability to binge on a variety of cheap-but-fantastic restaurants. In other words, Astoria is where people live, not-so-much party. ike Astoria itself, Static Lounge humbly boasts a hodge-podge of many things/ideas, from many places, all of which at first seems a little overwhelming, but then over time it melts into an endearing sparkling warmth, a sort-of Northern Comfort liqueur dripping down your throat. My boyfriend and I like to call this Astorian aura, “happy tacky.” It’s worldly, yet approachable. It’s refreshingly diverse, yet refreshingly unsophisticated. Static Lounge is obviously still a work in progress, but that’s obviously and shamelessly okay. There are corners of the lounge with candles and witchy-dark curtains and comfy couches and seemingly out-of-place leopard carpet patches that somehow altogether invite you to curl up and have a calm conversation (or a slow slutty make-out session), yet the bar itself glows bright with a peppy invigorating white brick, a perfectly clean backlit stage to the perfectly beautiful real men pouring you drinks. This brings me to a very important aspect of the place: the men. If you’ve spent any time here simply walking down the streets, you’ll notice that you won’t be wanting for a variety of Adonis gods – young and old – from all around the world (but mostly from where all the hot men from earth come from): the Greeks, the Brazilians, the Italians, the Lebanese, the Columbians, the Greek-Brazilians, the Greek-Brazilian-Italian-Columbian-Lebanese-Americans, etc. And speaking of the world, and its variety of balls, I’ve been to bars in many parts of the world, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the best bars are those that possess both an unassuming eclectic comfort that welcomes all of its individual attendees to have a good time in whatever unique way they please, AND a certain unexplainable wizardry to tantalize an entire group of strangers into eventually – collectively – forming both a runway to show-off their spontaneous balloon fashions and, most importantly, a human centipede orgy on the dance floor, tongues and legs and dicks twisting, as one, as one beautiful world with many balls, all dropping to the beat. And of course fog machines. You gotta have the fog machines. The amazing guest DJ helped too; he actually knew that there were other genres of dance out there besides POP, but he did obligatorily play a little Brit and Bey. And the plethora of men of all shapes and sizes and types that seemed to come out of the gay ass-cracks of Ass-toria, that helped too to convince us: Don’t go to bed early. Just keep calm. Stay in Astoria. by: MICAH ENLOE micahenloe.tumblr.com